Mixed Up North

Synopsis

Out of Joint's lively new show is based on real events in the Lancashire mill town of Burnley. Trish sets up a youth theatre group to bring Asian and White teenagers together. But half of them think acting is gay, one of the cast walks out and the local politics of the town start to get in the way? Mixed Up North tells the fascinating stories of the youngsters, and a moving history of their town. Robin Soans and Max Stafford-Clark previously worked together on Talking to Terrorists and A State Affair.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 13 November 2009

The Out of Joint tour of Robin Soans’s verbatim docudrama in a mixed race theatre club in Burnley comes to rest in Wilton’s, not the ideal venue for it, but a satisfactory showcase for the energy and vibrancy of Max Stafford-Clark’s company.

The project originated in an invitation to Stafford-Clark and Soans from LAMDA to create a new play with students; and several of those students - Kashif Khan, Rose Leslie, Kathryn O’Reilly, Claire Rafferty and Lisa Kerr - are making terrific professional debuts in a show which has not, oddly enough, been seen in Burnley itself.

The play was co-produced at the Bolton Octagon and has toured since September. The founder of “Streetwise” is a do-gooding liberal social worker, Trish, whom Celia Imrie plays as a pious mixture of Mother Theresa and Patricia Routledge, referring to us, the audience, as a few friends who have dropped by to watch the technical rehearsal of the new show.

Th...

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Latest User Review

addicted to theatre - 9 December 2009:

Well-played and angry, this is a good effort but isnt a play, more like a set of bits of drama. It felt like they'd workshopped the whole piece but had forgot to shape it into a coherent whole....

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